War was also a world without romance. He couldn’t avoid the drain on his soul, the ruin his young men were escaping from as they set about squeezing the last remaining drops of love from their nightly adventures. Tomorrow, they might be dead. We might all be dead.
But the love he knew had been within him seemed now to have drained away. He despaired that he could never again share the frivolities and elations of ordinary love.
Closing his eyes, looking back, Kien remembered the pain of those weeks. Those young girls and the boys of his platoon were all dead now. A constant fear for them had wrenched his heart. True, it was war, and the times were abnormal. The great issues, the important tasks of fighting and their sacred duties, had become the most important matters in life. Whereas the tiny issues, those filigree-fine joys and sorrows of human destiny, like the boys’ dalliance with the three farm girls, seemed less important. They were such rare occurrences they were considered by some as a bad omen, as though happiness must necessarily call down its own form of retribution in war.
It was indeed true; those small acts of love were an omen of terrible events to come.
Kien recalled the scene as if it were only yesterday. He was standing there in the pelting rain in the wet grassy yard of the small farmyard in the isolated valley at the base of a huge mountain where every night his young men had secretly met their new lovers.
His face, clothes and hair were all sopping wet. The sub-machine-gun was about to slip from his shoulder. Around the farmhouse the huts and storage areas from the district headquarters days seemed to send off vapour from the teeming rain as the drops bounced off their roofs. The sky gradually lightened and a few rays broke through, although some light rain persisted.
‘Ho Bia-aaaaa!’ ‘Lofty’ Thinh had started calling.
Kien had simply gone along with the search. After Thinh’s calls the other scouts scattered around the farm all shouting the girls’ names: ‘Ho Biaaaaa, May, Ma-aaay, Thom, Th-oom.’
There was no reply. From the high waterfall by the cliff between the farm and the foot of the mountain a huge fountain of white water arose, rumbling and foaming, sounding like perpetual thunder.
But no one replied.
The other sounds were from the rain. Water running off roofs, dripping into pools. Kien went inside. It was a lovely three-roomed house with bamboo roof, covered with perfumed wild lily. The furniture was in good condition, and tidy. A full set of rattan chairs and table, a flower pot, tea and teacups. An opened book. Beds, pillows, blankets. Mirrors and combs.
At the back, clothes were hanging on the line, washing that should have been brought in by then.
The larders were well stocked with paddy, rice and cassava. The smell of dried mushrooms, honey, and stores of other fragrant foods and spices filled the little kitchen. All seemed in perfect order. The kitchen table had been laid neatly, as though a full dinner had been prepared but the family had been called away. Bowls of dried fish, eggplants, rice, had been placed in the centre of the table and covered with insect-proof netting. For each person there were chopsticks, bowls, salt, pepper and small side plates. The main rice pot was still on the stove and below it, the charcoal and ash glowed dimly, still warm.
Kien and his men stepped out back, through peanut plants, eggplant, thyme and oregano. They walked cautiously, down the yard to banana trees and marrows. Beyond this vegetable garden a simple low wooden gate opened onto a tiny narrow path leading to a stream which ran into the main river a little way down. They stood there looking over the stream and up into the dim shadows of the mountain under which the little farmhouse stood.
Though it rained day and night, the farm girls had used water from the stream, wisely saving their well-water for the dry season. Kien approached the well. It seemed in good order, the lid fitted snugly and around its base a gutter had been dug, to drain away muddy water during heavy rains. The silence was unnerving.
Kien left the others and on a hunch turned towards the stream and noted the girls’ tiny toilet built over the stream, almost totally hidden from view behind bamboo. The narrow track from well to toilet was gravelled, weed-free.
Kien approached not by the path, but circuitously, by stepping quietly into the water and wading upstream.
The door of the toilet was open. He kneeled, unslinging his machine-gun. He was certain someone was in there…
That had been so long ago, yet now it was still vividly clear in his mind. The door of the toilet hadn’t been opened. It had been ripped off its hinges and thrown aside onto the bank. Inside, there had been two buckets part-full, a dipper, a pair of rubber sandals, and soap. A thin, worn housecoat and an embroidered towel hung on a tiny line. A piece of muddied clothing lay by the toilet wall, near a green canvas raincoat.
Something on the smooth rocks caught his eye. It was a torn white bra. In the dim light it looked like a strange, large flower with smooth, soft petals. On one petal there was a trace of blood.
Kien shivered, as though twine had been wrapped tightly around his heart. Then he pictured several greenish, ghostly enemy forms passing silently under the jungle’s canopy, quietly arriving at the jungle’s edge to find the farm, then entering… finding three young girls. One girl had been in the bedroom, another in the kitchen near the table, the third at the bathroom. There had been no time to react. No cries. No shots. No escape.
‘The commandos! The commandos, they did it,’ someone howled.
‘Oh, Kien,’ said Thinh in a whisper, his voice hoarse and trembling.
Beyond them the bamboo branches scratched eerily against the bamboo walls. Kien sighed, tightening his lips.
‘Did you hear anything this morning?’ he asked.
‘No. Nothing,’ they replied.
Kien tried to put the picture together. So, what had happened? These young men had been here with the girls last night, enjoying themselves.
This was 1974, not the dark times of 1968 and 1969, the worst years of the war. This was now a day’s walk to the front line. Yet this morning the young lovers in the platoon had sensed something wrong. They had persuaded Kien to take a look. Kien now agreed their hunch had been right.
‘How do you know they’re commandos?’ Kien asked, aware that whoever the visitors had been, they were still alive, and not far away.
‘We found a Rubi cigarette-end. And footprints,’ Thinh said.
‘What made you sense something was wrong this morning? You were happy enough when you came back,’ Kien said, letting them know he had known all along of their nocturnal visits.
‘Nothing specific. We suddenly felt unbearably anxious, that’s all.’
‘Now you tell me! Did any of you go back looking for them this morning?’
‘Yes. But we found no trace.’
‘You missed this,’ said Kien, pointing to the blood-stained bra.
Thinh stepped out front, slowly kneeling down. His AK rifle dropped from his shoulders, clattering on the rocks.
‘It’s Ho Bia’s! This is Ho Bia’s bra!’ he whispered, raising the bra to his lips. ‘Oh, darling, where did they take you? Why? You were so innocent! Why would they hurt you? What can we do?’
Thinh sobbed and moaned, uttering urgent prayers in a despairing voice.
Later, many years later, while watching a pantomime where an artist bent over, writhing his body in agonised desperation, by magical association Kien recalled the moments when Thinh had similarly crouched in sobbing despair, praying for Ho Bia.
The audience around him in the theatre had seen Kien suddenly sit bolt upright, remembering the war scene clearly. His attention on the pantomime faded as the sharp detail of the tragic love story of his men and the three farm girls unfolded in his mind. He drifted off into a reverie as he dreamed of that day, blind to the pantomime before him.